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It creates real jobs and wealth. A friend of mine has 200 people employed in his family office.

LightG 5y ago
"Real jobs and wealth" ... imagine putting them to work into something truly useful and creative, rather than a group of beck and call people.
- robertlagrant 5y ago
  "putting them to work" - what are you talking about? They are choosing jobs.
  - v-erne 5y ago
    Im guessing that He is talking about "having job" being a poor abstraction for value creation from point of view of whole society. Its like triple A rating for CDOs backed by subprime morgages. On the surface it seems good but if You look close enough You will see only bullshit and wishful thinking.
    - robertlagrant 5y ago
      I don't think your comparison holds. There is not whole society acting in concert, nor even in agreement about what is valuable. There are just individuals, some of whom band together into companies and other organisations, all with different priorities.
      - v-erne 5y ago
        I believe that throughout history few golden rules emerged (most of them boil down to "do as You would be done") which keeps our societies more or less stable (we, or rather some of us, are still here, dont we?). Even those who abhore this rules most of the time keeps it to themselves. But if we as a society give individuals too much power then some of them will try to impose their own random ideas and values on us. This was happening with kings and feudal lords and this is happening now with some (if not all) of capitalistic roulette winners.
        robertlagrant 5y ago
        We're not giving power as a a society. We are rewarding people through a system who create value in that system. If I can sell a billion people a widget for $2 that cost me $1 to make and ship, then I become a rich person without "society" being involved or "giving" anything. The people who have generally perpetrated tragedies have been tied to government rather than commerce. Your examples are all governments or equivalent, and this is where your final analogy is inadequate, I think. The power balance is ultimately that any government at any time can ban any company.
        LightG 5y ago
        Exactly. Thank you. Who is really doing the "choosing" here.
zkelvin 5y ago
What wealth does a yacht crew member create? A private guard? Or a private chef? These are all luxuries wholly consumed by the individual rich person, and whatever "wealth" may have been created vanishes the next day under the spin of the hedonic treadmill. The labor of these employees could have instead been directed towards build infrastructure, nursing, childcare, or any other number of jobs which generate real and persistent wealth which compounds across generations.
- gruez 5y ago
  >The labor of these employees could have instead been directed towards build infrastructure, nursing, childcare, or any other number of jobs which generate real and persistent wealth which compounds across generations. Yeah, that's called investment, and rich people also get flak for that.
- robertlagrant 5y ago
  > The labor of these employees could have instead been directed towards build infrastructure, nursing, childcare, or any other number of jobs which generate real and persistent wealth which compounds across generations. This is a silly yardstick. There are countless jobs like that. Probably half the people on HN don't have those jobs, and aren't employed by the super rich. If you're choosing who to criticise and then making up criticisms, and don't care if those criticisms also apply to countless other situations, then that's unlikely to be convincing. Except to those looking for a reason to justify their preconceptions.

"Real jobs and wealth" ... imagine putting them to work into something truly useful and creative, rather than a group of beck and call people.

robertlagrant 5y ago
"putting them to work" - what are you talking about? They are choosing jobs.
- v-erne 5y ago
  Im guessing that He is talking about "having job" being a poor abstraction for value creation from point of view of whole society. Its like triple A rating for CDOs backed by subprime morgages. On the surface it seems good but if You look close enough You will see only bullshit and wishful thinking.
  - robertlagrant 5y ago
    I don't think your comparison holds. There is not whole society acting in concert, nor even in agreement about what is valuable. There are just individuals, some of whom band together into companies and other organisations, all with different priorities.
    - v-erne 5y ago
      I believe that throughout history few golden rules emerged (most of them boil down to "do as You would be done") which keeps our societies more or less stable (we, or rather some of us, are still here, dont we?). Even those who abhore this rules most of the time keeps it to themselves. But if we as a society give individuals too much power then some of them will try to impose their own random ideas and values on us. This was happening with kings and feudal lords and this is happening now with some (if not all) of capitalistic roulette winners.
      - robertlagrant 5y ago
        We're not giving power as a a society. We are rewarding people through a system who create value in that system. If I can sell a billion people a widget for $2 that cost me $1 to make and ship, then I become a rich person without "society" being involved or "giving" anything. The people who have generally perpetrated tragedies have been tied to government rather than commerce. Your examples are all governments or equivalent, and this is where your final analogy is inadequate, I think. The power balance is ultimately that any government at any time can ban any company.
      - LightG 5y ago
        Exactly. Thank you. Who is really doing the "choosing" here.

zkelvin 5y ago

What wealth does a yacht crew member create? A private guard? Or a private chef? These are all luxuries wholly consumed by the individual rich person, and whatever "wealth" may have been created vanishes the next day under the spin of the hedonic treadmill. The labor of these employees could have instead been directed towards build infrastructure, nursing, childcare, or any other number of jobs which generate real and persistent wealth which compounds across generations.

gruez 5y ago
>The labor of these employees could have instead been directed towards build infrastructure, nursing, childcare, or any other number of jobs which generate real and persistent wealth which compounds across generations. Yeah, that's called investment, and rich people also get flak for that.
robertlagrant 5y ago
> The labor of these employees could have instead been directed towards build infrastructure, nursing, childcare, or any other number of jobs which generate real and persistent wealth which compounds across generations. This is a silly yardstick. There are countless jobs like that. Probably half the people on HN don't have those jobs, and aren't employed by the super rich. If you're choosing who to criticise and then making up criticisms, and don't care if those criticisms also apply to countless other situations, then that's unlikely to be convincing. Except to those looking for a reason to justify their preconceptions.